Very few crowd-pleasing blockbusters have ever been nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and the number to have gone home with what’s viewed as the most prestigious prize in the industry is even smaller.
Even if we go back over 45 years the pickings are very slim indeed, with The Towering Inferno, Jaws, Star Wars: A New Hope, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Titanic, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Avatar, Inception, and Black Panther comprising almost the entirety of the field.
And no, we’re not counting Joker because it was a mid budget R-rated psychological thriller, even if it did earn in excess of a billion dollars.
However, Sony have officially launched the campaign to see Spider-Man: No Way Home make the shortlist, and as you can imagine, Film Twitter has thoughts.
Is the 27th installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe a phenomenal technical achievement that delivers fan service on an unimaginable scale? It certainly is, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily Best Picture material.
When the Academy expanded the number of eligible films from five to ten, it was even dubbed ‘The Dark Knight rule’ after Christopher Nolan’s modern classic was shockingly omitted from consideration, but blockbusters have still remained largely shut out since then.
It’s going to be a hot topic of debate until the nominees are officially announced on February 8, with plenty of hot takes no doubt still to come.
